This invention relates generally to the field of recreation and sports equipment; and more particularly, the present invention relates to designs for bowling alley gutters.
The American Bowling Congress reports that, as of 1988, there were 7,923 bowling establishments in the United States comprising some 150,000 bowling lanes. The number of bowling establishments and bowling lanes worldwide is certainly several times these values. Thus, bowling is a popular recreational activity, in the US and around the world.
The typical bowling alley will be used by bowlers having all levels of skill from highly expert to novices. Indeed, one of the attractions of bowling as a recreational activity is the ability of all levels of skilled participants (including young children) to take part in the activity simultaneously.
However, players of all skill levels will occasionally launch a bowling ball at the pins in such an imprecise fashion that the ball will leave the alley before impacting the pins. This is much more common, certainly, among novice bowlers frequently found in family bowling establishments. Such "gutter balls" plunge into a special channel adjacent to the alley, the gutter, and are carried to the region below and behind the pins for return to the bowler for another attempt. Such gutters are placed on either side of the bowling alley to receive errant balls and should not be confused with a separate channel (typically under the lane) which is used to return the ball to the bowler. The gutter must withstand the impact of a heavy bowling ball, often up to 16 lbs in weight, falling from the alley or rolling into the gutter with some velocity of its own. In any case, the impact of the bowling ball on the gutter will gradually cause distortion and impact damage. The ball return channel is not subject to such impacts and, consequently, has a longer service lifetime.
The gutter must be sufficiently hard and rigid to withstand impact by the bowling ball, but must also be sufficiently soft and yielding so as not to cause damage to the bowling ball itself. To balance these opposing needs, older bowling alleys often used wooden structures for gutters. However, as a relatively soft material, wood did not withstand the impact of gutter balls for long before dents, chips and other damage occurred, requiring refinishing or replacement. To avoid the need for frequent repair or replacement to wooden gutters, other materials were sought. At present, a common choice for gutters is to make them of metal. While metal gutters provide improved service life, a plastic lamination is typically used (commonly a vinyl) to provide a softer surface for the bowling ball to impact. Such vinyl coated metal gutters are very common in modern bowling alleys.
Under normal usage, even vinyl coated metal gutters require replacement. Typically, the lifetime of such a bowling alley gutter would be about 10 years of normal use in a commercial bowling establishments. Thus, each year in the US, about 15,000 bowling lanes (2 gutters each) are candidates for replacement, and several times this number are replaced around the world. The design of a bowling alley gutter which simplifies the problem of replacement is an important object of the present invention.
Effective bowling alley gutters must meet several requirements. Many bowlers (more common among expert bowlers) throw the bowling ball toward the pins with a pronounced curve in the trajectory. Such a "hook" is preferred by expert bowlers since the bowling ball impacts the pins at an angle not precisely parallel to the long axis of the bowling lane, and the ball proceeds through the region of the pins continuing to follow its curved trajectory. It is thought that such an impact angle and trajectory causes the pins to fly about in such a way (pin "action") as to increase the probability that pins will topple each other. However, such curved trajectories often come very near the edge of the bowling lane before curving inward towards the pins. Indeed, it is not uncommon for such hooked rolls of the bowling ball to overhang the edge of the lane before curving inward and striking the pins in a completely acceptable manner. Thus, the first requirement for a bowling alley gutter is that it be recessed below the horizontal level of the lane so as not to interfere with bowlers throwing such "hooks" in an otherwise acceptable bowling technique. (The situation might be different if the only balls overhanging the gutter are those headed for the gutter and scoring oblivion anyway. However, this is not the case.)
Thus, the gutter is commonly recessed below the level of the lane on the side of the gutter closest to the lane. On the opposite side of the gutter, away from the lane ("cap side"), no such requirement exists. It is prudent to make the gutter much higher on the cap side so as to effectively catch badly misthrown balls, preventing them from overshooting the gutter and interfering with the play of adjacent lanes. Prior to the present invention, bowling alley gutters typically were designed with an asymmetrical cross-sectional shape, the lane side having a different geometry from that of the cap side.
Vinyl coated metal gutters are typically fabricated in lengths convenient for shipping; significantly less than the length of the entire bowling alley. Thus, the installers must fit several pieces together in order to fully construct a bowling alley gutter for the entire length of the lane. However, when the bowling ball rolls over a joint (on its way to the pin region for return), no protrusions can be present. Such protrusions of coated metal are easily capable of damaging the bowling ball, much to the distress of the bowlers who frequently use their own custom-made bowling balls. Thus, the present practice typically has the joint regions overlapped, such that as the bowling ball rolls down the gutter toward the pin region, it goes from a higher level to a lower level at each gutter joint.
Thus, the lane side of the gutter is typically different from the cap side of the gutter. At the joint sections, the side nearer the bowler overlaps the side nearer the pins so the bowling ball always rolls downhill. These two requirements have led present bowling alley gutters to be fabricated in a "left" and a "right" version. That is, gutters come in sets like gloves in which the gutter for the left side of the alley has a different, mirror image, construction from the gutter for the right side of the alley. If installers were perfect, reading, understanding and carefully following all instructions, such left-right differences would not be a problem. Unfortunately, in the real world installers frequently do not carefully follow instructions; may not understand instructions in english, or indeed, may not be literate at all. A complication for left and right gutters (not shared with gloves in a pair) consists in the fact that it is far from obvious in a casual inspection which is left and which is right. It has become a significant expense for manufacturers to send technicians around the globe to repair and correct misinstalled bowling alley gutters. Therefore, it is a major object of the present invention to have a bowling alley gutter fully symmetrical in cross-section, with no difference from left and right gutters. This simplifies the installation of such gutters, reduces the opportunities for misinstallation, and consequently reduces the expense of repair and reinstallation.
The combination of the fully symmetrical gutter of the present invention along with specially designed mounting clips, allows a particularly rapid and efficient installation of the present gutter, as fully described below.